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Game Description

Flavour

You descend on wings of fire to the tormented earth of a dying world. Within the thunderous, claustrophobic hold of your drop pod, the assault on your senses and the agonies the crushing G-force exert on your body would kill an ordinary man, while outside the armoured ceramite burns like a falling star. But you are no ordinary men who endure this fiery trial—you are Space Marines, the Emperor’s chosen Angels of Death.

Within your mind, you recall the mission briefing, replaying it with perfect clarity. The world below is Tantalus, a resource moon on the edge of the Castobel system, a system around which the jaws of the Great Devourer are tightening shut. Your minds focus on the goal of the mission, and you recall the last broadcast from the world’s surface—an icy, harsh voice barking from the vox-net through howling static:

Attention Deathwatch vessel, Thunder’s Word. This is Magos Biologis Zardos Vyakai. My conveyance has been fatally damaged and forced to crash-land en-route to rendezvous zone. I survive, the datacore survives. I require immediate extraction from this location. The swarm approaches, Crash site unsafe, I will seek shelter nearby until your arrival. The datacore must survive and be retrieved. Location Encarta follows. I will set this message to repeat as long as the anima endures. Message ends.

The voice cut off and was followed by a rapid chatter of sacred binary code, before beginning again:

The swarm, five hours and counting, five hours until the whole area is swept clear of life under an unholy tide of fang, venom, and claw. Five hours. Five hours and counting.

The retro-thrusters hammer into you like a blow from an enraged god. The drop pod doors blast open and you spring forth from your crash harnesses, power armour systems already engaged, auto senses tracking, weapons in hand. The daylight wanes, and through your suit’s filters you detect two pervading scents on the bitterly cold air: burning chemicals and human blood.

The Jericho Reach is a damned stretch of stars drowned in a bloody tide of war. This once-Imperial domain is beset on all sides by the terrors of the xenos and the evil of dark-hearted men. Cast amid its war-torn and threatened worlds is the industrial moon of Tantalus in the embattled Castobel system in that part of the Reach known as the Orpheus Salient. For more than five Solar months now, the Castobel system has come under the assault of the all-devouring Tyranid menace, and Tantalus is no exception. While the fate of the hive world of Castobel that gives this star system its name hangs in the balance still, Tantalus has not been so fortunate, and the outlying colony is now in its final death throes.

With the battle for Tantalus lost, and the jaws of the Tyranids closing inexorably around this moon, the few survivors that remain are desperately caught between a doomed struggle to survive and desperate hopes for escape. However, the lives of all that remain can now be measured in no more than hours. The fall of Tantalus and the horrific deaths of its inhabitants may not have been entirely in vain—a small Adeptus Mechanicus Biologis contingent was present studying local life on Tantalus at the time of the first attack. Stranded on Tantalus, they took the opportunity to turn their unflinching gaze upon the monstrous life forms that came to devour the world. Their priceless data on the bio-forms and attack-patterns of Hive Fleet Dagon, bought at the sacrifice of most of the Magos’ own lives, may yet prove invaluable to the war in the Orpheus Salient and must be claimed by the Deathwatch, whatever the cost.

For Tantalus, the end has come very abruptly. The battle was tipped in the Tyranids’ favour by the appearance of one of their bio-ships bringing heavy reinforcements in orbit around the industrial moon. As fighting against the vanguard organisms was already desperate below, the bio-ship was able to encroach almost unopposed, and unleashed wave after wave of spore pods heavy with monstrous predator-forms and lethal parasites which have already slaughtered the last serious Imperial resistance and begun to poison and consume Tantalus’s biosphere. Unable to break through the Tyranid assault and escape off-world, the shuttle carrying the last member of the Mechanicus team, Magos Vyakai, fled for Tantalus’s southern polar regions that had not been overran thus far. Unfortunately, it was brought down by the Tyranids a few dozen kilometres short of the relative safety of the polar ice fields, crashing near a promethium extraction complex designated Pyroclast-Gamma-9. Since the shuttle’s crash landing, fragmented transmissions from the Magos indicate both his personal survival and that of the vital datacore he is carrying. The Deathwatch frigate Thunder’s Word that had been due to rendezvous with the escape shuttle is now scrambling a last minute extraction mission; a Kill-team is to be deployed immediately to Pyroclast Gamma-9.

The last transmission was three hours ago before contact was lost in the static storm. This communication indicated that vanguard Tyranid predators had been sighted and the great devouring swarm could not be far behind. The sands of time are running out, and it remains to be seen whether the Deathwatch Kill Team can locate Magos Vyakai and escape with the datacore, or whether the horror of the Tyranids will lay claim to all.

THE GM

I've never run a WH40k game before. My experience is with D&D but, having just got my hands on the books, I'm itching to play. As a result I'm looking for players who aren't going insist I change my decision when I get something wrong. After all the mechanics are always secondary to the story. I'll accept noobs but I'm also hoping there'll be some experienced players wanting to get involved so that it doesn't become the blind leading the blind :)

In my experience of running pbp games, I've discovered that pre-written adventures tend to work best. So, with that in mind, I plan to run the adventure Extraction, in the back of the Deathwatch Core Rulebook. If you'd like to play, please refrain from reading this adventure as it would most likely spoil the enjoyment of both yourself and others. If all goes well, I'll follow the adventure up with Final Sanction and Oblivion's Edge. Players who've played any of these adventures previously are of course still welcome to apply but just be aware of the potential to metagame.

As Battle Brothers in a Deathwatch Kill Team you'll be a force to be reckoned with but don't underestimate the forces I can throw at you. I'm a fair but relatively ruthless GM. You'll need to act like members of the Adeptus Astartes survive. Without carefull planning and teamwork you won't.

From what I understand characters in the WH universe are far more mortal than other systems and I won't be afraid of testing this theory. With the random determination of consequences of this system, in all likelihood, characters will die anyway. When this happens I'd like you to elaborate on the death and treat it as part of the story to be enjoyed just like the rest of it. At the end of the day it's only a game and the idea is to have fun.

HOUSE RULES

I have a couple of house rules to make things run more easily.

We will be using group initiative for this game. Essentially you roll initiative individually. Some of you will get to go before your opponents and others will get to go after but, within each group, it doesn't matter who posts first.

Initiative results are:

Bertram = 10
Zahariel = 6
Angrom = 12
Nemiel = 7
Tyranid Warriors = 9

Therefore the initiative order is:

Group 1: Angrom and Bertram
Group 2: Tyranid Warriors
Group 3: Nemiel and Zahariel

It doesn't matter that Angrom rolled higher than Bertram. All that matters is that he rolled higher than the Tyranid Warriors and therefore gets to act before them. If RojoGrande41788, whose playing Bertram, posts before Izual, whose playing Angrom, then it doesn't matter. The actions are considered to occur simultaneously.

Nemiel and Zahariel on the other hand must wait for the Tyranid Warriors to move before they can perform an action.

Whenever someone wants to use a fate point they must RP it using their demeanour. If they do a good job then they get to keep the fate point, if not they lose it. Incidentally a single line post will result in a lost fate point as will abusing the system. Space Marines without fate points cannot use their demeanour.

Characters receive three reloads of standard ammunition for their standard issue weapons and signature wargear weapons. Ammunition for special issue weapons must be purchased separately.

ROLE-PLAY

This brings me onto role-play. I like my games to be rich and colourful. I am going to try and bring the world to life around you, the least you can do is try to bring your character to life and add a bit of interest to the world yourself. This means writing more than a single line each time you post. If I just wanted to roll dice all day I'd be playing table top. I play (and prefer to play) pbp because it allows me and my players to weave a story together. That said writing too much can be just as bad. Individuals who write mammoth amounts each time they post have a tendency to put the less creative players off and I don't have time to read a novel every time I log on.

So what I'm going to do is reward players with 50 xp for every post containing between 50 and 100, in character, words. If you go over this limit a little from time to time I don't mind. This means you'll earn experience at a rate of 1000 xp every 20 posts.

POSTING FREQUENCY

This brings me to posting frequency. I'm usually in a different time zone to every one of my players therefore I'll probably post a maximum of once per day, excluding weekends. I expect my players to do the same. Posting more than once a day, is permitted but I'd rather a well thought out post than lots of sloppy ones, so I'm going to put a cap on experience to 50 xp per day. Therefore there's no incentive to post more often than once a day.

Therefore you'll earn experience at a rate of 1000 xp every 20 days. If we exclude weekends you'll gain experience at a rate of 1000 xp per month.

POSTING STYLE

Because there are no character sheets I'd like every post to include a mini stat-block as the title to each of their posts. This way I can keep track of wounds, fate, fatigue and ammo. By-the-way, poor housekeeping will result in weapon jams and various other inconveniences.

I prefer posts to be in the third person past tense, the way most books are written. I expect posts to be fully spell checked and read through for errors. There's an edit button at the bottom of the post, use it! Rolls should be at the bottom of posts in spoiler threads. I don't want to see posts cluttered with roll tags, it's messy and disrupts your writing.

Like this

CHARACTER CREATION

Characters should be created as described in the Deathwatch Core Rulebook. No other books are allowed at this moment. I want to keep things simple, remember this is my first time using these rules. As described there, you have 1000 xp to spend. However I will reward an extra 100 xp, to a maximum of 500 xp, for every 100 words you write in the Nature section of your character sheet. Beware, though, I value quality over quantity and will not be inclined to accept your character just because you've written a load of rubbish to make the word count.

I'll probably be accepting in the region of six players depending on applications. Ideally that would mean one of each of the six specialities: Apothecary, Assault Marine, Devastator Marine, Librarian, Tactical Marine and Techmarine. I have no illusions about commitment. I expect drop-outs and will probably take some reserves to fill in when players inevitably go missing.

Please post all applications in the thread provided using the template provided but remember to post in the advert too, to keep it alive. All rolls during character creation should be made in the thread provided and again using the template provided. You will need the Deathwatch Core Rulebook to play this game.

Requisition for the first adventure will be 50 points. Please note that ammunition for special issue weapons must be purchased separately. Characters receive three reloads of standard ammunition for their standard issue weapons and signature wargear weapons.